Storm King Art Center

Storm King Art Center - NY Travel Blog

Except for my parents visiting I now also have my brother visiting. Many people in a small apartment is a bit narrow so an outside activity is a good choice. Especially as the weather is, once more, just great. We decided to make a short ride upstate to the open air museum / sculpture garden of Storm King Art Center which was advised by my colleague Florin.

Storm King Art Center can be, more or less, compared to a museum like the outside section of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands (see here and here). It is a 2-km² (500 acres) wide area of cultivated landscape filled with statues in between the beautiful hills of the Hudson Valley. It was named after the nearby Storm King Mountain, see here.

"Pyramidian" by Mark di Suvero

The center was founded in 1960 by Ralph E. Ogden as a museum for Hudson Valley painters. Nowadays it hosts mostly modern sculptures. Many of them by sculptor Mark di Suvero of whom a small selection was exposed earlier this year at New York City's Governors Island, see here.

One of the most remarkable sculptures in the park is Three Legged Buddha by the Chinese artist, Zhang Huan. Apart from the sculpture itself, which is already impressive and remarkable, the fact that the statue can be used to cremate deceased makes it for me the most unusual piece of art.

We had to get used to the end of the Daylight Saving Time. The sun started setting behind the neighboring Schunemunk Mountain much earlier than expected, giving a moment of mysterious Twilight followed by the deep red evening glow.